Is there life on other planets?

[Hardcore UFO's, GbV]

I believe in Alien Lanes.

First, if by "other planets" you aren't confining the question to the local solar system, then it seems to me that life on other planets is a dead certainty, since there appear to be many millions of galaxies, each with many, many millions of stars. That ensures the existance many billions of planets in the universe. The thought that life arose on only one planet, this one, borders on insanity.

The genuinely interesting questions come further down the line of reasoning. Life may be common as dirt, but it is a long leap from life to alien visitors.

The laws of Darwinian evolution are so general and fundamental that it is reasonable to assume that wherever life arises, evolutionary pressures will also arise, leading to speciation. In a certain number of cases, life will make the enormous leap from single cells to multicelluar organisms. Once this occurs, the number of forms life can take explodes. So, it is reasonable to assume that there are at least hundred of thousands of planets where life is complex, multiform and pervasive in a way that is similar to the earth. Probably millions.

Among complex animals on earth, limited forms of both intelligence and consciousness are fairly common. Memory has obvious survival advantages, as do learning and foresight. We happen to stand at the very outer edge of the bell curve in this regard, but anyone who observes animals knows they possess some intelligence, too. Given a couple billion years of evolution, intelligence in some form and to some degree will occur on most life-infested planets.

So far so good. But prodding mere intelligence and consciousness over the evolutionary hump to develop a highly social animal with complex communication skills and high technology presents a special problem, since it isn't clear what sorts of specific evolutionary pressures were applied to perfectly good primates in order to force our ancestors into taking this weird path toward survival.

In fact, the whole primate strategy seems to be a dubious one, since so few primate species have survived. Metaphorically, we seem to have been squeezed through a tiny keyhole of chance and leapt into a wholly new world of possibilities that no other animal on earth has ever visited, or was likely to visit. But, given enough chances, it still seems reasonable to speculate that this has happened many hundreds, and more likely many thousands of times in the universe.

The "final frontier" in this set of questions is space travel. Even if there are plenty of highly intelligent, highly technological societies scattered through the universe, you've still got to provide them with a motive and opportunity to visit us. That means they must solve some pretty obdurate problems in physics.

Remember, we're probably talking. not merely about travel between stars, but across and between galaxies. It is all well and good to imagine doing this, but doing it is another thing. Even if a physically possible method for intergalatic travel does exist (wormholes and so on), it is almost certain to be so unimaginatively expensive in terms of materials and effort and so impractical in terms of return on investment (the equivalent of evolutionary suicide), that it would checkmate all progress in that direction.

Still, when you start from a base of millions of galaxies, I suppose even the vanishingly small odds of aliens ever visiting earth can't be ruled out as utterly impossible. It's so enormously improbable that it approaches impossibility asymptotically.

One thing ordinary humans seem very bad at is systematically assessing the odds of stuff like this happening. Bring me the head of an alien on a platter and I will believe it.

If you are saying the first, then I wish you would reveal your line of reasoning for reaching this conclusion. I would find it interesting. If it is the second, then I agree with you, because you are stating the blindingly obvious.

As for saying that my assumptions are "dubious", all you are saying is that it is possible to doubt them. Sure it is. The whole subject is confined to the realm of speculation and everyone's speculations about it could be fairly called "dubious".

But, whatever your point was, I think you missed my point by a good country mile, which was that, even using somewhat persmissive assumptions and granting the existance of somewhat numerous advanced technological societies among the millions of galaxies, there are powerful reasons to conclude they have not solved the profound obstacles inherent in coming to earth for a visit and they never will.

If your position is even more restrictive than mine in terms of granting the existance of such societies, then you should be even quicker to reach the same conclusion -- although you didn't say what you conclude on the alien visitation question.

As my previous post probably implied, since we don't know (to name just a few major factors) how common solid planets are, we don't know how life evolved, we don't know too much about what mind and intelligence are, nor how likely it is that any creatures might evolve same in any given period, we don't know how old the universe is, we don't know that the speed of light is an absolute limit, and we certainly don't know how expensive wormholes might be (where did that nonsense come from in your thinking?) it would be mad to try to speculate on the odds of intelligent life existing and dropping in here.

(sorry for swearing)

If you know that my speculations are "nonsense", please share that knowledge. If you really have no idea what degree of validity my speculations possess in relation to the truth, even if only by sheerest accident, then I would appreciate a clear acknowledgment that your own judgement in this matter is based, like mine, largely on ignorance. I submit that, logically, if we are equally ignorant, and neither of us pretends that our opinions are based on anything but assumptions and speculations, then our opinions are equally valid, if only because there is no earthly way to decide which of our opinions is more invalid than the other.

I would further point out that my speculations about life elsewhere do not reflect any judgement on you or your abilities. On the other hand, your comments do reflect a judgement on me. Because I identified my speculations and assumptions as speculations and assumptions, I think pointing out that are inexact and unfactual is no basis for calling them "shoddy", unless you can do better.

If, as you maintain, "it would be mad to try to speculate on the odds of intelligent life existing", then I would point out that you have thereby consigned a very large number of people, including a large number of respectable scientists, to the madhouse, for what I would characterize as a harmless intellectual exercise. You might want to rethink that position.

I definitely would NOT rule out life on other planets....

Rather than claiming that lots of scientists do this, show me one example of a respected scientist saying something so foolish, or give me some account of how you get to these numbers.

You ask me to name a scientist saying something 'as foolish' as what I've said. The very construction of your request renders it useless as a way of furthering the conversation. However, I can easily offer you proof that reputable scientists do speculate on the presence of life elsewhere in the universe. As it happens that NASA has already scheduled a couple of probes to Mars, the major purpose of which is to gather information regarding the possible presence of life on that planet in the distant past. The SETI project wouldn't exist without such speculation.

Scientists speculate, sometimes wildly. They couldn't do really good, creative science without speculating. That doesn't mean they stop there. But that is where science starts, because no one ever looks for evidence of something they never thought about before.

I suspect that what bothers you most about my original post is that I used numbers inexactly, for the purpose of illustrating the gist of an idea rather than for precision and measurement, and that this offended your mathematical sensibilities. If it seems to you that this was a perversion of the use of number, then I plead guilty. Again. But your inability to grant any legitimacy on my side and your repeated insults really suck.

aimless: there is definitely life elsewhere.

martin: you can't say 'definitely'.

aimless: you're saying there definitely isn't?

martin: no, I won't say definitely and neither should you.

aimless: be clearer.

?

I definitely believe there is life elsewhere in the universe. I base this belief on what I consider to be strong reasoning, rather than arbitrary whim. For example: Life is based in chemistry and physics. Those operate everywhere and 'everywhere' takes in a lot of territory. Because, in my experience, similar forces applied to similar materials generally give similar results, I conclude it is far more reasonable to believe life arose elsewhere than to believe the earth is as unlike the rest of the universe as chalk from cheese.

Furthermore, Darwinism addresses what happens to life once it arises: given enough time, life speciates according to known laws. The earth is over four billion years old. We know that was long enough to evolve humans and for humans to generate high technology. Again, based on the fundamental scientific idea that the laws of the universe operate everywhere alike, I believe the laws described by Darwinism are laws, and therefore apply to life wherever it exists.

Clearly, there is nothing in the laws of life that requires human-like life to evolve. However, I believe there is time enough and space enough in the universe that the traits of intelligence and sociability would combine in some species elsewhere. Again, this seems more reasonable than to believe that life on earth has thrown out an anomaly so freakishly strange as to set humanity apart from every other life form in the entire universe.

But I am careful to characterize my reasoning as a chain of inference. A chain of inference begins in a certainty, but each successive link in the chain carries one further and further from certainty and into the unknown. I don't pretend otherwise. I cannot say that any other planet "definitely" has life, still less that any other planet "definitely" has a high tech society. But when I compare the chain that leads to this conclusion with that which concludes human life is utterly unique, not just in detail, but in kind, among the millions of galaxies, then I choose the first chain as the stronger.

It is only at the point where the chain of inference leads to the conclusion that other high tech societies from other planets have conquered the problems of intergalactic travel and have visited the earth that I find this conclusion more improbable than its counterpart.

Others can agree or disagree with my conclusions, but I would at least appreciate it for my position to be understood before it is dismissed. I know that understanding can take several iterations and clarifications, but dammit, it also takes some effort and goodwill on both sides. Just repeating "that's nothing but a chain of inference, so it is foolish nonsense" gets us nowhere, as does mischaracterizing what I said as "definitely".

I am apparently thought of on here, I'm told, as affable and easy going and pleasant. This might make it more surprising when I say that I'm finding you to be very annoying and very dim and I have no desire to talk to you any further.

I cannot help but think that you have done some thinking on this subject. It seems a pity that as a result of your annoyance with me we shall not know what your thinking is. I have done my best to address the objections you had to my arguments. If, in the end, your primary objections are to my personality, then there is little to be done about that.

obviously I thought it was otherwise I wouldn't have posted it but it is funny because I didn't even really read the posts either of you had made.

"Every time a major impact occurs on Europa, a vast quantity of water is splashed from the ocean into the space around Jupiter. Some of the water evaporates, and some condenses into snow. Creatures living in the water far enough from the impact have a chance of being splashed into space and quickly freeze-dried. Therefore, an easy way to look for evidence of life in Europa's ocean is to look for freeze-dried fish in the ring of space debris orbiting Jupiter.

Sending a spacecraft to visit and survey Jupiter's ring would be far less expensive than sending a submarine to visit and survey Europa's ocean. Even if we did not find freeze-dried fish in Jupiter's ring, we might find other surprises- freeze-dried seaweed, or a freeze-dried sea monster."

I think it's funny cos when you see the Earth from space, one of the only things that hints at life is the amount of green on our planet, and that's even if we're looking close enough...

And sitcom broadcasts of course..

But no where near as cool!!!

The First Men On Mercury

Greatest thing I've ever read, maybe

Don't talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking

Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.
“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

"I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach."

tell us more, oh bad science fiction plot recycler visionary scientist

Some scientist usually comes out with this "Don't talk to aliens 'cause they may come and enslave us and eat our pets and stuff!" every twenty years or so. They always figure that the aliens would have human psycology and human drives.

Aliens will have human drives:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/1/1066563_1eceff58e7.jpg

damn. the word I was thinking of was rides, wasn't it? :-/

No, they'll be driving much better cars than that. They'll be taking over the world, remember?

Barney over across the hall in the Chromatography lab is offering 3-1 against the proposition that there are intelligent beings living under the surface of Pluto and I for one am not going to turn down such easy money

― Respected Scientist (J0hn Darn1elle), Sunday, August 31, 2003 9:11 AM (6 years ago)

Belgian tabloid headline about this: HAWKING SAYS ALIENS EXIST

We've been missing the obvious all along.

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i191/fluxion23/pg-alien.jpg

the alien isn't inside, the car, THE ALIEN IS THE CAR

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/Alien%20queen%20car%20russia-thumb-520x506.jpg

I think we've found out what was really going on in My Mother, The Car: an alien was possessing Jerry (mumble mumble, forgot his last name)'s car and using the voice of his dead mother to lull him into a false sense of security in hopes that he'd later help it take over the world.

omg! Transformers is real, people. xpost

LOL: http://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/12903192862

this is a topic i find fascinating, but the only honest answer to this question is "we don't know, and have no way of knowing until we find some."

here's some interesting arguments from the naysayers:

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/steven/?p=7

...the total lack of evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence suggests that among the all the many possible numbers of civilizations compatible with Drake-style calculations, very low numbers are the most likely to be right. As Fermi observed, if they were out there, they would have been here, and we would have noticed, or more likely failed to exist in the first place.

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2007/01/aliens-stop-looking/

As another poster points out, because the sample set of life is 1, the standard deviation is infinite, so there is no reason for us to think that the vastness of the cosmos implies anything about the probability of life. It’s that intuitive feeling of the universe being big that causes people to think that there must somehow be aliens. But that bigness is merely big to us. The configuration space is so much larger, and indeed, most atomic configurations are not realized in this universe. People’s intuition is as if there is some cosmic arbiter that says, “okay, it’s been 100 billion planets, time to seed this one with life now!” Why at 100 billion? Why not seed life on every 10^10^123 planets, instead of merely every 10^11? The multiverse is infinite. There can be an infinite number of intelligent civilizations, each living alone in their own universe. To think that the vastness of space implies the presence of aliens is itself statistically ridiculous.

and intelligent life is a whole other ballgame. think about how long life on earth existed without humans. and how long we've actually been sending out radio signals.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/nasascientistfindsevidenceofalienlife

is this it? because i wanna be the guy who breaks the news to ilx.

my dad sent me a link to that journal article. the abstract contains the fantastic, fantastic phrase "indigenous to this meteor".

do they have enough material for... resurrection?

I was all excited until I read some of the comments on that foxnews interview. Stupid godfuckers ("their monkey theory can't explain the majesty of the LORD" - oh fuck off and die already) - I wish aliens came over here and just annihilated our entire planet right now. We're not worth discovering.

alien fossil taking a free ride on a meteor is the plot to a lot of horror/sci-fi films. i am excited!

<3

stoked, but no one irl seems to share my enthusiasm. my wife's response when I told her: "wow cool hey would you mind walking the dog?"

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/did_scientists_discover_bacter.php

http://www.theonion.com/articles/mean-scientists-dash-hopes-of-life-on-mars,1423/

Thx for both those links, guys!

I wish aliens came over here and just annihilated our entire planet right now.

we have already started iirc

http://www.mentalfloss.com/store/images/D/pluto.jpg

Hello.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=habitable-planet-gj-667cc

I was going to suggest that this is Lou Reed's "new planetary system", but unfortunately according to Vogt "It's pretty deficient in metals" .

The low metallicity (seen in the parent stars absorption spectra) means the parent star is a population II star formed rather early in the galaxy's existence. If there's enough silicon & iron for a planet 4.5 times Earth's size to accrete, there's likely enough carbon for organic chemistry (and life).

The problem with habitable zones around red dwarfs like Gliese 667c is that they're so near the star that the planets are liable to be tidally locked with one face permanently facing the star (like Mercury and the Gallilean moons of Jupiter in our own system). Gliese 667cC has an orbit of 0.28 AU (26 million miles), so that may not be a problem.

To the OP, I'm largely in agreement with Stephen Webb in Where Is Everybody? and Peter Ward in Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe. The universe is probably teeming with bacteria-like life, but complexity and intelligence are exceedingly rare.

Keep asking for a Pluto:Revolve in Peace t-shirt from the Hall of Science but haven't received one yet, guess I'll have to get it for myself.

Interested to read those books Sanpaku mentions.

Seeing this thread on new answers immediately made me think of Martin S.

Of course I have met many of them and they all think Earth sucks.

Earth: the toilet venue of the galaxy

They don't like all the wrappers and litter about.

aJacques Vallée

bthat lawrence poem upthread is pretty good

there is no life anywhere else in the universe & there is no way a colony of humans could survive a trip to any other potentially habitable planet

whew glad that's settled

I would actually feel glad if this was the case

Consciousness downloaded into nanobots and bodies 3D printed at the other end, how about that?

Burroughs thought of it first

also, there is no way santa claus could possibly visit all of those houses in one night

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-venus/potential-sign-of-alien-life-detected-on-inhospitable-venus-idUSKBN2652GO

Remember this?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55071058

Its twin has just been deployed in Romania:

https://adevarul.ro/locale/piatra-neamt/un-misterios-monolit-metal-similar-gasit-recent-sua-descoperit-cetate-dacica-romania-1_5fc1178c5163ec42714d36bf/index.html

(Sorry, I couldn’t find an English equivalent but it includes photos and a video embed.)

oh god david surber is totally one of these cumstains who reads every craig childs fart in existence. going to be about 500 more douchebags in utvs on the lockhart basin road next spring.

That Aimless/Martin Skidmore dialogue really cracks me up for some reason - a shame to have missed the golden age of early ilx.

love that there was a poster named "sb" in 2003. very prescient

Yeah that was good xpost

Weird thinking about the dates on those.

This one made me smile:

DJ Martian
Posted: 3 October 2001 at 01:00:00

Yes, there is life on Mars.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-55212336

DJ Rob da Bank, another island resident, was also among those who took a stroll to see the sight for themselves.

He mused: "I'm not sure if it's aliens, a Coldplay PR stunt or a local mirror dealer drumming up trade, but it got us all down the beach anyway."

Otm. There's one here some 20 miles away now too, btw. I'm still guessing Coldplay PR stunt.